THE PEOPLE’S AUDIT
STEPHANIE ALLEN and COPE will improve service delivery, cut waste, and clean up the mess left by Ken Sim’s mismanagement with a People’s Audit.
THE PEOPLE’S AUDIT
After promising “line-by-line” budgeting, Ken Sim’s 2026 Budget was the least detailed in Vancouver’s history, concealing cuts to city services, and attracted a record-setting 600+ speakers in opposition.
In 2026, Sean Orr moved a motion to have a staff report on department, staffing, and service changes as a result of Ken Sim’s austerity budget. The ABC majority voted it down.
🗹 Identify and report on what happened and why under Ken Sim’s tenure, and who bore the consequences for the decisions made.
🗹 Improve transparency and expose the problems at the city by talking with current and past city workers, city partners, and the public to improve service delivery and cut waste.
🗹 Fix the ways that the bureaucracy is broken, by reviewing service and systems performance, patron experience, staff climate, and bringing more voices to the table to transform the City.
🗹 Turn the ship around and put Ken Sim and ABC behind us by immediately reversing disastrous decisions, and work with the public, stakeholders, and city workers to transform Vancouver to work for people.
EXPOSE THE DAMAGE, CLEAN UP THE MESS
Last month, it was reported that ABC’s mass layoffs resulted in a record $6 million in severance payouts, including almost half a million dollars to replace city manager Paul Mochrie with a replacement who was hand-picked by the Mayor’s office without a public job posting or process.
An Auditor General report earlier this year found that at least $60 million, with some estimates more than double that, in lost revenue from botched land deals that benefit developers and speculators over the last decade, which ABC chose to not act on.
🗹 Interview workers, residents, and stakeholders and review records to identify how and why major decisions against the public interest were made at the city, including the layoffs of hundreds of staff, the replacement of the city manager, and the rollback of affordable housing requirements and development fees.
🗹 Fight waste and bureaucratic absurdities from Ken Sim’s mismanagement. If there’s wasted money at the City on management bloat, consultants, and outsourcing, strange bureaucratic loops, and duplication of work, the frontline workers know it best.
🗹 Identify why progress towards city goals of affordability, families, renters, and climate has stalled or reversed under Ken Sim, and get back on course. The city is failing to meet its targets on affordable housing, homelessness, transportation, and climate under Ken Sim. Vancouver’s Healthy City strategy was abandoned without reporting back on how Sim failed. We need to review why these areas are being neglected, and change priorities to get back on target.
🗹 Identify and crack down on violations of public trust. Where improper conduct against the public interest is found to have potentially occurred, the city must take definitive action to restore trust, using an empowered integrity commissioner, and if necessary, an investigation.
REVERSE DIRECTION IMMEDIATELY
Under Ken Sim, the City of Vancouver has frozen funding to community grants, cut library hours, cut climate and affordability programs, and cut life-saving measures like cooling kits and the sex worker safety planning position.
At the same time, the city gave away $3.8 million to developers in money that was earmarked for affordable housing, and raised fees on things like permits, parking, and cut funding to services that working people in our city rely on.
🗹 Restore the Renters Office and give it the power to crack down on bad landlords. We’ll fight for the strongest tenant protections in the country, fix up apartments that landlords neglect and bill them for it, and make it easy to turn rental apartments into co-ops.
🗹 End Ken Sim’s cruel freeze on supportive housing, and get serious about fighting homelessness. We’ll speed up the affordable and social housing we need by bringing back the social housing initiative, restore the DEOD zoning, and work with non-profits and other levels of government to accelerate stalled projects that would provide real affordability.
🗹 Bring back Vancouver’s slashed climate programs, and take the climate crisis seriously again. Ken Sim and ABC have reversed the city’s progress on climate change, cut the sustainability department, put the 2026-2030 climate plan on hold, and cut climate safety programs. We’ll make Vancouver a climate leader.
🗹 Reverse the cut to the Empty Homes Tax (EHT), and then triple it. The EHT was scheduled to go up to 5%. Ken Sim stopped the increase, and then created a new loophole that’s leaving more homes empty. COPE will enforce the empty homes tax properly, close the loopholes, and phase in increases to 9%.
END THE INFLUENCE OF LOBBYISTS AND INVESTORS
Around the world, billionaires are buying politicians and elections to make the world work for them instead the rest of us.
We can fight back and take democracy back from the billionaires.
🗹 Ban the revolving door between industry and government. COPE will implement mandatory cooling off periods between appointments in city government, and work in private sector industries that lobby the city.
🗹 Empower the Integrity Commissioner to hold politicians accountable, and update the city code of conduct to prioritize breaches of public trust. The integrity commissioner found Sim and ABC councillors broke the code of conduct by coordinating amendment wording and expected votes in private group chats before public meetings. When a separate investigation found Sim misused his office to “objectively harass" Councillor Orr, ABC voted down an ordered written apology.
🗹 Enhance the independence of the Auditor General, and give them the resources they need to conduct the investigations that are needed. The Auditor General does great and important work, but they are accountable to city council.
🗹 Implement the Auditor General’s 10 Recommendations in their 2026 Land Sales Audit to prevent botched land deals that cost the city millions. Ken Sim and ABC received this shocking report outlining $60 million+ in lost revenues and chose not to act. We will.
🗹 Bring in a municipal lobbying registry. The public deserves to know how and when the super-rich are influencing decisions made by city governments. The city can take steps on its own, but we’ll fight to strengthen city authority and make sure toxic influence can’t hide from public oversight.
MAKE CITY HALL WORK FOR PEOPLE
If we’re going to restore trust in this city, we need to open the books, expose the full truth about what Ken Sim and ABC have done, and act immediately to transform this city for the people.
🗹 Advance an emergency transitional budget to stop and reverse direction. Stephanie and COPE will take action right away to reverse changes made at the City by Ken Sim, including restoring the Renters Office, accelerating affordable housing, and investing in parks and libraries.
🗹 Conduct a full review of city service performance, resident experience, staff climate, and systems to deliver better public services for people and cut waste, and engage communities and residents who are left out of decision-making in a new direction.
🗹 Appoint a team to deliver an Affordability Audit for Vancouver, that outlines the places where people’s cost of living is growing, and where the city can use its power to lower costs, whether it’s groceries, child care, or transportation, and to set new targets and a path to a more affordable city.
🗹 Deliver city budgets that listen to residents, and make people’s lives better. It will take time to repair the damage Ken Sim and ABC have brought to Vancouver, but we’ll start the work of making a city that works for people right away.
Vancouver doesn’t have to be this way.
We can fight for housing. We can fight for the climate. We can fight for integrity. We can fight for public services. We can fight for justice.
Together we can build the city we need.
Together we can take democracy back from the billionaires.
Let’s finish the job on October 17th.